2046 VISION OF THE FUTURE
Wurundjeri Country, Banks of the Merri Creek, Naarm / Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
BY TOM VS
It looks a bit like Ceres, in Coburg, or it used to. Now it has grown into something far larger and more alive, as if a seed was planted there and quietly, organically, took over most of Melbourne.
It is mid-morning on a cool cloudy day in Wurundjeri Country, and the smell reaches me before anything else: coffee and baking, and underneath it the hint of a warm northerly breeze carrying the particular richness of an abundant autumn. People are beginning to go about their business. The first thing you notice is the sound: voices, laughter, birdsong, a group of musicians starting up on a low stage somewhere nearby. Some enthusiastic younger kids begin to dance to their tune. There are no cars. Delivery vehicles are ingeniously repurposed golf buggies. At the tram stop, a small crowd waits and chats.
The houses are modest and beautifully crafted, set around fecund gardens, fruit trees, bush tucker plants, raised beds, vertical herbs, vines. Solar panels, wind turbines, water wheels. No fences anywhere. In the middle distance, native grass stretches to a billabong ringed by vast eucalyptus trees along the banks of the Merri Creek. An airship drifts slowly overhead.
The learning hub is the heart of it. A series of smaller buildings around a big open pavilion, ramshackle and alive. Something like a school and something like a market and something like a university, though none of those words quite fit. Older people and kids move between spaces together. Some are in little skills workshops, making things with their hands. Some are in sitting circles, talking, laughing and debating. Others sit at low tables with coffee and books. Younger kids at play, older kids tinkering with the help of mentors. A small group is making paper. Others are building furniture from found materials.
A flock of black cockatoos fly overhead.
On the news today: a new exoplanetary system has been discovered.
Something is being figured out here, quietly, practically, joyfully. About a different and kinder way that humans might live together in the world.
Envisioned through: Imagining a Better World, Melbourne Design Week, 2026
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Image generated with Leonardo AI, 2026
PROMPT: A view from the banks of the Merri Creek through majestic gum trees, of a ramshackle CERES grown larger, in Coburg, Melbourne, 2046. It is early autumn morning, hazy light, golden autumn leaves. A ramshackle learning hub meanders between the trees, interspersed with a few modestly small but crafted houses set around fecund gardens, fruit trees, bush tucker plants, raised beds, vines, vertical herbs. In the middle distance though there's a stretch of native grass by a billabong, surrounded by huge eucalyptus trees. Buildings are made from upcycled timber, growing green walls and biophillic solar-punk curving forms. The roofs are covered in native grasses and translucent hexagonal solar panels. Small figures, dressed in casual attire. A young person, face indistinct plays guitar on a wooden platform. Silhouettes of small figures, including older people and children, move amidst low tables with steaming coffee and open books. Native grasses grow between a the beds of a food forrest, ringed by vast river red gums along the Creek bank, a wind turbine in the distant trees, a water wheels by the creek. A simple futuristic airship hovers unhurried across the hazy sky high above the canopy of trees. Captured in cinematic photorealism, high dynamic range, ultra-realistic 8K detail, a touch of film grain.